P RIV ATE charity still persists in England, though mostly it is prac- ticed in the disorderly, hole-and- corner style recommended by Jesus. Mrs. Bernstein was so far in step with the welfare state that she used a paid administrator, but she did so for reasons of her own. If you have to go about In a wheelchair, she said, you can't see things for yourself. Moreover, a bene- factress of immense weight carried by grun ring porters up to attics or down to basements (and misery is seldom domi- ciled on ground-floor level) is bound to create remark and bring every cheat, thief, cadger, and social worker, not to mention hosts of other unfortunates, to settle like blowflies on the benefited one. So she availed herself of Miss MacTav- ish, whose muscular legs and unobtru- sive bearing could get her in anywhere. Mis" MacTavish had already got her- self into a perfectly satisfactory life of her own. She was an artist, and illustrat- ed children's books for a living. It was in the intervals of drawIng little girls with turned-up noses offering apples to horses with classical profiles that she went about Mrs. Bernstein's business. Every three months or so, Mrs. Bern- stein would engage Miss MacTavish in strategIc con versation to See if any professional do-goodery had lodged itself In her administra- tor's outlook. The re- sults were reassuringly negative. The outlook remained that of the artist; no tendency to confuse making people a tnfle better off with making people better clouded Miss MacTav- ish's appraising eye. It was above all better- ment that Mrs. Bern- stein wished to avoid. She had been heavily bettered in her youth and was of the opinion that it would be quite as nauseous to be bettered in maturity or in old age. She was even sus- picious of bodily better- ment, since the body IS the envelope of the sou] and not always reliably impermeable. Instead of carrYIng bundles of blankets and parcels of nourishing food, Miss MacTavish car- conversation about the Loch Ness mon- ster, the best way of cooking carp, and the first of many invitations to lunch. F or several years she acted as Mrs. Bernstein's emissary \vithout ever ques- tioning the method laid down for her. This was not mere docility. It seemed to her that the method worked un- commonly well. She saw people look- ing pleased, and could quit them with- out any sense of having smudged their pleasure. She saw-which is perhaps rarer-people who regularly received money from her and who met her again without the least trace of fear or calcu- lation. Naturally, she dId not always see these wonders, but they occurred oftener than she could have expected. Now and then she gave advice, which was warmly reciprocated in valuable recommendations about health, canaries, geranium cuttings, cockroaches, and so on. And in the course of time she be- came increasingly attached to Mrs. Bernstein, who became increasingly fatter, uglier, richer, and more versed in the affaire Port-Royal-this last on the ground that It brought her closer to Mme. de Sévigné. It was Mr. Herzen who drove Miss MacTavish to ques- tion the absolute inadmissibility of do- ing things for those you give money to. Mr. Herzen was solitary, sickly, hypo- chondriacal, sometimes charming, always shift- less, and never continu- ing in one stay. When traced to a new lodging, he would explain that he had not been able to pay the rent, or that he had merely forgotten to do so, with the result that he had been cruelly evicted. Quite often, this was not so at all. He had paid, he had gone-the land- lady just couldn't ac- count for it. Disappear- ing thus for months on end and when traced being sicklier, sadder, shabbier, and distinctly reproachful-since he in- sisted on thjnking he had someho,"'" displeased his kind friends and been cast off by them-Mr. Herzen drove Miss Mac- Tavish to take a stan d. "I really cannot go on looking for Mr. Herzen any longer, Mrs. Bern- stein " "Still lost, poor man? " "No, no. I've hunted A WORK OF ART ried pound notes, which are easier both to convey and to conceal. But as one must not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn, she was free to give ad- vice-provided that the advice was drawn from her own experience and that the money was given first. "My Uncle Heinrich," said Mrs. Bernstein, "did it the other way up. And so I was always being trapped into per- forming a pound's worth of behavior and then getting two and sixpence. That's not fair dealing. And one must not do things for them. Even the rich don't trust even the experts who do things for them. For the poor it is im- possible. It would crush all the spon- taneity of their taking." "I wonder that you are prepared to trust me," said Miss MacTavish. "Well, yes. Perhaps you'll run off with it. So you wanted it. So that's al1 . h " rIg t. Discovering Mrs. BernsteIn was an enlarging experience, just as beginnIng to paint in oils had been, and Fiona MacTavish blessed the day when she had run up to steady the chair which was about to topple sideways into the Serpentine-an act that had led to a \ oj\ J . , . , '\ ',. .. I . .. r,:" I " I .' cA(/}'\ l)CMj "So Marshal Dillon shot him, and that ended that. l-rhen, the followzng week, there was thzs old sheepherder, who came znto town . . ." 39